Consumers are increasingly using kiosks to conduct business with enterprises. The kiosks come in a variety of sizes and are used for a variety of purposes. Some kiosks are drive through, such as fast food establishments, pharmacies, banks, and the like. Other kiosks are stationary located in gas stations, airlines, grocery stores, department stores, and the like.
In addition, what is considered a kiosk is evolving with today's technology. For example, digital signs now provide advertisements and mechanisms for users to interact with the displays to perform transactions. Such mechanisms include blue tooth communication, Near Field Communication (NFC), Quick Response (QR) code scanning, Wi-Fi communication, and the like.
Consumers can even use their portable digital devices to perform transactions or interact with enterprise kiosks. One such popular approach is to distribute coupons to and redeem coupons from mobile phones. In fact, with public environmental concerns regarding the use of paper products and with the widespread adoption of smart phones and electronic transactions, the use of electronic coupons is becoming increasingly popular with both the consumers and the enterprises providing those electronic coupons.
Typically, these electronic coupons have serial numbers represented as bar codes that allow enterprises to automatically recognize and redeem the coupons and restrict conditions of the coupons. However, enterprises lack the ability to track or to monitor who handles a particular coupon or class of coupons once those coupons are injected into an electronic media and subsequently distributed to various networks available to the consumers.
Thus, a wealth of information regarding consumer networks and the influence of particular consumers and networks are being lost by enterprises; thereby, preventing enterprises from maximizing the electronic medium for the benefit of the enterprises.
Moreover, short of restricting an electronic coupon to a particular consumer and/or short of restricting an electronic coupon to a single redemption, enterprises lack the ability to monitor and to restrict a coupon's redemption based on how that coupon is distributed and/or how often the coupon is transferred before its redemption, which may be of import to the enterprises.
In short, although electronic coupons are widely used in the industry, the enterprises are presently unable to leverage, control, track, and optimize the process once coupons are initially generated in an electronic format and initially distributed to consumers.